GA Russell

Happy Birthday 2009 Tom!

clave, many thanks for your input. Your posts have been just what I was asking for when I started the thread. It appears to me that both Amazon and Sony want to keep you on the hook. It is good to know that you don't have to remain an Amazon customer after you purchase the Kindle, but it appears to me that Amazon offers no support in that regard, apparently only explaining how to use the Kindle with Amazon. At this point I'm reluctant to spend $300 on an item that I then need to figure out on my own how to use. If the price were $100, I probably would have a different attitude. With that link you provided last night, I found a list of YouTube videos showing the txtr at some book fairs in Germany in the spring. Pretty impressive, although I think I would prefer a larger screen, maybe like the Kindle DX. However, I think that the lack of an SD slot for the Kindle 2 and DX is going to be a deal killer for me and maybe a lot of people. One thing we haven't mentioned is that I strongly suspect that Amazon will offer the largest selection of copyrighted books. That may be important to many people. However, this idea that with their DRMs Amazon and Sony have the ability to limit the amount of time you license your book for is troubling to me. I don't think that that is something I would want to pay for in the future. I suspect that a lot of people will be turned off by that. Again, the price is an issue. If they let you read a book for a month for only a dollar, I think that a lot of people would go along with it.

RC, I'm feeling the same way. That's why I'm leaning toward the txtr.

Yesterday the Ticats caught a Bomber scout spying on their practice, taking 12 pages of notes (which the Ticats confiscated). http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/blue...article1218416/ ***** The Bombers' Arjei Franklin will miss 6-8 weeks with an ankle injury. IMO he is one of the best non-imports in the league, and the team is going to have a lot of trouble replacing him. http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/sports/fo...s-50614972.html

Thanks for that link, clave! I'll study it for a while. Let me ask you a basic question. Can you go to Project Gutenberg with your Kindle 2 and quickly download a book for free with no hassle?

funkogre, I live in the country. The books I want to read are not found in the public library. The Sony PRS-505 is the old model from 2007. I believe that what I saw at BJ's was the new PRS-700 model.

Moose, here's my thinking. I am primarily interested in older books now in the public domain. My books seem to always cost $15 plus fairly high shipping. So I'm thinking that by downloading 15-20 free public domain books the reader will pay for itself, and I then get to read the classics for free. I get the impression that all of the readers are like the iPod - the consumer cannot change the battery. You have to send it in with something like a hundred bucks, and they will send you a new one, with whatever was in your reader's memory lost and gone. I have read complaints that the Kindle 2 does not have a slot for an SD card, which people use to store their books. Instead, when your Kindle's memory is full, you upload your books to Amazon's website, and trust them to keep your library for you. A lot of people don't like that idea. I don't remember exactly what the Sony reader at BJ's cost - maybe $259 or maybe $239. I would expect Amazon's price to be the most expensive, so if they have the Kindle 2 pegged at $299, I would expect the txtr to come in lower than that.

I saw the Sony eBook reader at BJ's two weeks ago, and I have been doing a little research. You heard it here first! I predict that the eBook reader, especially the Amazon Kindle, will be the #1 Christmas present this year. It's all pretty confusing, but my research indicates that both the Sony and the Kindle come with DRM which basically forces you to buy your books from them. Amazon will even charge you for public domain books because they cite their effort to run those books through their DRM! Furthermore, Amazon claims that you are not buying the eBook, but only a license; and they reserve the right to limit the time you have to read the book before they discontinue your access to it! I have found a German reader that looks very appealling to me called the txtr. It is open source with no DRM. No fee for public domain books. It will be released in October. No word yet on the price. Just this past week Amazon has lowered the price of its Kindle 2 from $350 to $299, so I imagine that the txtr will be in that ballpark. Have any of you purchased an eBook reader or looked into buying one? What are your thoughts?

Happy Birthday EKE BBB, wherever you are!

Happy Birthday 2009 jostber!

Uh oh. Paul McCallum disappeared from the Ticats game due to what the announcer said was an undisclosed injury. Today it was announced that while attempting to make a tackle, he broke his wrist and injured his knee. He should be out eight weeks. So now the Lions are in the market for a kicker. http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/BC/...0120741-cp.html

I received my confirmation today. But when I tried to play the game, it was way too slow.

Here's a good article about some of the characters CFL fans have enjoyed reading about over the past twenty years. http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/200...107386-sun.html

The Beatles' Second Album (US Capitol)

Saskatchewan Roughriders 46....Toronto Argonauts 35 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/foot...article1215357/ http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/Gam...0102221-cp.html The Ticats-Lions game last night was so good that my appetite for sports is sated until next week. I listened to some of the first and most of the second of this game, but my internet connection went out, and I just decided that I had other things to do. Sask scored 28 points in the last five minutes of the first half. Darian Durant has started six games for the Riders, and they have won all of them.

Hamilton Tiger-Cats 31....British Columbia Lions 28 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/foot...article1214976/ After the Bombers-Stamps game, I took a 100 minute break, and then tuned into this. Imagine my surprise when the announcer said that there were six minutes left in the third quarter and the Ticats were leading 21-14! Great game, with a particularly exciting finish, as the Lions really got their act together at the end. DeAndra Cobb had a great game. He ran for 100 yards and scored a TD.

Winnipeg Blue Bombers 42....Calgary Stampeders 30 http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/Gam...0096251-cp.html Calgary: What the heck is wrong with the Stamps? In both games they have allowed their opponents to get big leads in the first quarter. Both opponents have scored 40 points. I wonder if the defense is demoralized by the cutting of JuJuan Armour late in camp. Winnipeg: I was very skeptical when Mike Kelly announced before camp opened that Stefan LeFors would be his starting quarterback. He had been in the league only two years, and had played very little in Edmonton behind Ricky Ray. But I have to say that he has looked pretty good both games so far.

It looks like Jim has put me on his ignore list!

Here is the beginning of his LA Times obituary. There is a link there to his album covers. I didn't know that the photo shoot of Pearl was the night Janis Joplin died. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/...0,1170616.story Tom Wilkes dies at 69; Grammy Award-winning art director and album cover designer Wilkes designed album covers for the Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Janis Joplin and other legendary musicians. By Dennis McLellan July 11, 2009 Tom Wilkes, a Grammy Award-winning art director and album cover designer whose work included albums for the Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, Neil Young and other music legends, has died. He was 69. Wilkes, who was diagnosed with a form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease) in 1999, died of a heart attack June 28 at his home in Pioneertown, Calif., said his daughter, Katherine Wilkes Fotch. Wilkes was partner in a Long Beach advertising firm when he became art director for the 1967 Monterey International Pop Music Festival for which he created all of the graphics and print materials, including the festival's psychedelic poster that was printed on foil stock. "In fact, he won an award from Reynolds aluminum for the most creative use of aluminum foil," Fotch said. "He was always very proud of that." Music producer Lou Adler, who produced the landmark music festival with singer John Phillips, said Wilkes "caught the spirit of the time" with his festival graphics. "Most of the art work in that particular culture was coming out of San Francisco, and what Tom did was he took a San Francisco look, or niche, and made it international," Adler said. "You can see a lot of the posters from that period and say, 'Oh, that's the '60s.' With Tom, it isn't dated. There's a very special look to it." The Monterey pop festival "catapulted" Wilkes' career into the music industry, his daughter said, beginning as art director at A&M Records. During his heyday, Wilkes designed or provided the art direction or graphic design for scores of album covers, including designing the covers for the Rolling Stones' "Beggars Banquet," Neil Young's "Harvest," Eric Clapton's "Eric Clapton," Joe Cocker's "Mad Dogs & Englishmen" and George Harrison's "Concert for Bangladesh" and "All things Must Pass." As he did with many of the albums, Wilkes also shot the cover photo of Joplin for her 1971 "Pearl" album, which shows the flamboyant singer lounging on a settee. "Their photo session was the night she overdosed," Fotch said. In 1973, Wilkes won a Grammy Award for best recording package for the Who's rock opera "Tommy," as performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Choir. David Fricke, a senior writer at Rolling Stone magazine and an admirer of Wilkes' work, said that "the magic and the sort of importance of album design was to be able to catch the eye, to try and get a sense of what the music and the personalities were inside and also make you want to buy it." Wilkes, Fricke said, "was able to capture a certain essence of what was on the record and the person who made it. "You look at something like Neil Young's 'Harvest,' the texture of the cover and that very simple, almost antique lettering, and you get a feel of what Neil was trying to do in that record, the honesty and the grit and the deep Americana of what that record represents now." And the cover for "Mad Dogs & Englishmen," Fricke said, "with that pose of [a muscle-flexing] Cocker almost like a circus strongman captures the carnival atmosphere of what those shows were like." Adler, for whom Wilkes designed the "Tommy" album as well as a number of Cheech and Chong albums for his Ode Records label, described him as "very creative" and "very volatile." "He was very, very independent and sometimes difficult to deal with because of his strong convictions on what he was doing," he said. But the end product, Adler said, "would be very unique and special, as evident by his artwork when you look at it." Born in Long Beach on July 30, 1939, Wilkes graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in 1957. He attended Long Beach City College and graduated from what was then known as Art Center School in Los Angeles (now Art Center College of Design in Pasadena). After two years as art director at A&M Records, Wilkes was a partner in Camouflage Productions, a partner in Wilkes & Braun Inc. and art director of ABC Records. Then, in 1978, he launched Tom Wilkes Productions and also became president of Project Interspeak, a nonprofit environmental and human rights organization...

Unable to find anyone who would trade for him, the Bombers released Derick Armstrong. http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/sports/fo...n-50347487.html ***** As if their chances against the Lions weren't slim enough, the Ticats' top three tailbacks are all injured, so they will be starting their fourth string running back DeAndra Cobb. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/cfl-...article1213396/

Happy Birthday Guy!

Montreal Alouettes 50....Edmonton Eskimos 16 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/foot...article1213226/ The Als dominated from start to finish, but the Esks were able to keep it close on the scoreboard until the last minute of the first half. The Als scored 31 points in the fourth quarter.

NIS, the only downside I know of is that my ISP rations the service, so that I can only download so much per month. That includes streaming audio. So with my level of service I am unable to listen to lala as much as I would like.

David Naylor Week 2 preview http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/week-2/article1211579/ Montreal-Edmonton preview http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/Edm...075171-sun.html

Doug Ramsey's Rifftides blog today has a YouTube clip of a 1960 Dusseldorf performance of Hackensack by Stan Getz and John Coltrane together! http://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/